meines vaters klavier

Ever since late 2006, my dad has been obsessed with the piano. He is terrible, and he improves very, very slowly. I sat down with him this winter and gave him a music theory lesson. Just the basics. Chords, intervals, keys, time signatures, sharps and flats. Periodically he calls me on the phone and asks me what "bb" means, or where the mysteriously missing Fb and B# keys are. His goal is to play "Lyphard Melody," a moderately difficult Richard Clayderman song. When my mom and I took a trip to China together in December 2006, he spent Christmas alone. He told me he drank a glass of wine that night, sitting at the piano, pushing keys once in a while, crying. Later I found something a note he wrote to himself on the piano: "Piano is the number one path to survival," in Chinese.

There is two-octave portable keyboard in the passenger seat of my dad's car. He says he keeps it there so he can go out to his car on his lunch break and practice the piano. We have a cheap jangle piano in the living room, but my dad prefers playing very quietly late at night, and has bought a five-octave keyboard so he can keep the volume down. It sits on an ironing board in what was once my bedroom.


Let me draw your attention to some details. First, note that "Lyphard Melody" sits on the keyboard. Note also that every single note has been highlighted in one of four colors of highlighter. I'm not sure of the purpose of this.

Note also the stapler underneath the keyboard. My dad wanted a pedal for the keyboard. He bought one from Fry's Electronics, looked at the wiring, and then returned it to the store. And then he made a pedal out of some wire and a stapler. To increase the piano's sustain, one must depress the stapler with one's foot. He is an electrical engineer.

The upright piano is in the living room. It's covered in trinkets and photos of me and Richard. On the far end of the piano, my dad has placed a cup and filled it with dollar bills. This way when he plays he feels like a cabaret performer. Whenever I sit down to play a song, he adds a dollar and applauds madly, shouting, "Hao!"

The piano bench in the living room has not only plastic shoes but crumpled ankle socks as well. This is to prevent scratching, of course.

I can hear him in my former bedroom right now. He is not playing the keyboard. He is sitting in front of the computer, listening to a cassette tape of somebody playing "Lyphard Melody" that he recorded off a video on YouTube.